Feedback: Detroit City Council needs to get its priorities straight

Aug. 2, 2013

I find it interesting, if not mind-boggling, that the Detroit City Council has the time and finds the need to pass a resolution calling for a federal investigation into the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. With all of Detroit’s problems, bankruptcy, crime, blight, political corruption — to name just a few — they find the time and need to spend on a legally settled trial in another state? Give us a break. Is that the most important thing the council has to be concerned with?

Greg Arceri

Northville

Detroit bankruptcy was like losing a friend

When I watched the evening news and heard that Detroit had claimed bankruptcy I was shocked. How could this happen to my city, the city I was born in, grew up in, went to school in, lived in and came back to after my service time? I felt as though I had lost a friend. So who do we blame? The mayors that we have had? The City Council? I don’t have that answer, but I do know that my hometown will never be the same. I only hope that in my lifetime, I see this city come back stronger than ever and be the industrial giant it was when I was growing up.

Robert Denstedt

St. Igance

Hillsdale College chief's words offensive

Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn refuses to indicate the number of African-American students who attend Hillsdale College. He said Hillsdale does not count “dark ones.” He was testifying in Lansing in opposition to Common Core education standards. I find Mr. Arnn’s comments repugnant, outrageous and not fitting of any college president.

Gerald Maxey

Farmington Hills

Columnist shouldn't be so partisan all the time

In one column, Brian Dickerson condemned the new write-in candidate in Detroit, Mike Dugeon, for abusing the electoral system by attempting to create confusion. But he also uses the column to condemn Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger for attempting to put a “friendly candidate” on the Democratic ballot last year. Mr. Dickerson forgets to mention the attempt of Oakland County Democrats in 2010 to cause confusion for voters by creating phony parties with names similar to the tea party.

In another piece, criticizing the pension practices of Democratic Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, he says that unnamed “right-wing pundits” will conflate the pension abuses with the past pension abuses by the City of Detroit. Dickerson cannot simply condemn abuses by Democratic politicians without finding a way to smear Republicans at the same time. This is crude partisanship.